The Power Within: Holding On
by Winr100
Summary: A man who was kicked out of his only place to live then nearly killed by his best friend... gets hit by a semi-truck... then wakes up in strange surroundings. All he is equipped with are his suit, hat, mask and a gun. Now, he needs to find out what's going on, why and how he can mess with it. Rated M for Language, Violence, and maybe some other stuff later. You never know.


**Hello everybody! You probably don't know me and probably don't give a shit, but whatever. For those that do know me, let me just say that I'm trying to extend my area of writing from JUST MLP, because that can get a bit tiring. I'm sure as hell not stopping those fanfics, though, because I've still got a lot of work to do on them! Also, I normally have goals for each story I write, and this one is no different, but instead of a word goal, I'm just going to go with naming each chapter after a song. Lastly, the main character in this story is based off of a favorite Let's Player of mine, and so are all his associating characters (that don't come from the anime, of course). Anyway, I'm gonna shut up now so you can get to reading!**

I

Rise Of The Phantom

"If you can't trust me, then get the fuck out!" Canis yelled, throwing me out the door and onto the wet, rainy streets.

"What are you talking about?" I defended myself. "Of course I trust you!"

"Bullshit!" She snapped back at me. She threw my guitar afterwards, hitting me square on the head. "And take this with you!"

Why was Canis Skye so convinced that I didn't trust her? Aw, fuck it. I turned around and began walking, holding my guitar by the neck and nearly dragging it on the sidewalk. I decided to drag myself down the street for about a mile or so until I reached my friend Luis Chavez's apartment. The rain soaked into my obsidian-colored suit, but my hair was protected by the white fedora that Canis had given me for my birthday the previous year. I mumbled the lyrics to the song I had stuck in my head all night as I walked down the dampened city streets. It wasn't long before I stood in front of Luis's apartment building.

It was large, brick and old as shit. You could tell that the apartments on the inside were about as cheap as dirt just by the look of the outside walls of the building. I pushed through the door angrily and proceeded down the hall to the fourth door where he resided. I could always remember which door was his because I just had to remember that his door is four. (Have a cookie if you get that reference!) I knocked a few times before he opened the door. He had that indifferent look on his face, as if he didn't care why I was there, he just knew I needed a place to stay for the night.

He turned and proceeded back into his apartment. "So she finally kicked you out?" he asked.

"Yeah" I acknowledged.

"Oh, I have something to show you!" he spouted randomly as he walked over to a strange looking clay thing. "This is an ancient Aztec artifact. It's a long story on how I found it, but some guy is willing to pay me 25 million dollars for it! It's that old and rare."

"Wow!" I said, my eyes widening greatly. So this thing is worth 25 mil-" Luis's cat came up behind me and scared me shitless. I jumped and fell face first into the clay… whatever the hell it was. It shattered, breaking shards of clay off into my face. I winced slightly because it didn't actually hurt as much as it sounds like… There was only one problem though… Luis snapped.

He didn't even say another word, he simply picked me up and dragged me outside. He tore open his car door and as I struggled to get away, he shoved me into his car and locked it. Now, one thing I have to mention is that Luis's car was specially made so he could lock someone inside. It has a key lock on each inside door instead of some other way of locking it. Anyway, he rushed back inside as I struggled to find a way out.

I realized I could kick out the windows as he came back out and did it himself. It was easy to see the insanity in his eyes. Trust me, if you lost 25 million dollars and you were about as poor as a homeless ten year old child, you'd go psycho too! He kicked out the window that was facing the apartment building and yanked up a huge can of gasoline… oh shit…

He poured the gasoline inside the car, missing me completely, but hitting the cushiony and highly flammable seats. He then took a match and struck it on the bottom of his shoe, and then through it into the car, lighting it on fire. The inferno raged as it crawled towards my suit. Everything caught fire, including me. I screamed as the fire traveled to my face and began melting my flesh. I struggled to get a good kick, but I finally kicked out the window after a while. I pulled myself out of the burning car and onto the ground, my face stinging endlessly from the burning.

I saw a shooting star go by. "I wish I could go to a place where no-one knows me…" I muttered. "A place where I could be whoever the hell I want to be." A few sparks jumped from the flaming vehicle and jumped onto the surface of my face. I yelled at the burning pain which suddenly just gave out. "AND I WISH I HAD SOMETHING TO COVER ALL THESE BURNS… a mask or something for my face… and I don't want to look like Spawn… I want to look like me…" I forcefully dragged myself up off of the ground and began to stumble forward up the street, no matter how much it hurt… but it didn't hurt. I continued down the road as the rain made the burns on my face sizzle. It felt like I had reached the fourth degree of burns. Luckily, I only had them on my upper torso. I had no more than third degree burns below my waist, and as much as they hurt, it wasn't as bad as it was everywhere else on my body.

I stumbled further and further down the dark wet road until I heard a honking from behind me… I turned around just in time to see a semi-truck hit me head-on!

I woke up with a sudden but quiet gasp and I was sitting alone at a table in a small dark saloon place. Looking out a window, there was nothing but barren desert as far as the eye could see. It looked very… western. "Great" I thought, looking out the window to see nothing but dessert, "now Clint Eastwood's gonna show up and shoot me for no reason."

"Vash The Stampede?" I heard some guy say over in a corner of the room. I looked over to see two goons sitting there playing cards.

"That's right" the second one answered. "He's the man with the sixty-billion double dollars on his head. They say he showed up in Dankin Town recently; made quite a mess, I hear!" 60 billion double dollars? Must mean 120 billion dollars, I guessed.

"So what happened?" the first one asked.

"The whole town got zapped! Mountains of corpses all over Dankin!" he replied. "The coffin-maker got so rich, he built himself a mansion of wood!"

The first guy whistled and said "The guy sounds plain crazy!"

I noticed there was only one other person in the saloon: a guy in a big red trench coat. He had long blonde hair and was drinking something that looked a little like scotch to me.

The second guy continued. "He's more than crazy! I think we'd be wise to keep a safe distance; messin' with Vash is like dancin' with death! He leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes! Women, children, he don't care! He'll kill 'em all! They call him the humanoid typhoon!"

THUMP. The fat-ass bartender dropped a big metal barrel and ran off yelling like a sissy. Both those thug idiots finally shut their mouths and looked up to see what all the hoopla was. They drew their guns. I noticed that in my pocket was a gun… a Glock to be exact. I took it out to see what model it was… 32. 17 rounds a magazine with some pretty high power and semi-auto… not the best, but it's pretty damn good! I'd take it, after all, I was very well acquainted with multiple means of "defense." I kept hold of it just in case there WAS danger lurking outside.

There was a strange noise and the two thugs drew their revolver's hammers back. I just chambered a round by pulling the top part (whatever the fuck you call it) back and letting it jump forward. I noticed a giant boomerang flying towards the saloon, so I decided, fuck staring at it and I hit the deck. Sure enough, the top half of the building came flying off and the two idiot thugs in the corner were just confused whereas the guy sitting at the bar was calm as all hell!

There were an ass-load of hired guns outside and I could tell what they were about to do, so I dove behind the sign that came flying down in front of the guy in the red coat. I protected my head as I lay on the ground and watched the last of the walls get torn to shreds and then the shreds torn to shreds. The sign fell down to reveal me and the red guy who calmly got up and pushed his sunglasses father up onto his face. I jumped to my feet so I didn't look like I was cowering in fear from those goons.

The giant metal boomerang came flying back at the thugs and a random giant metal hand reached out and grabbed it. It was some giant fat guy that was ten times bigger than all of the guys on the ground next to him. He smirked at the revealed man who I had officially made the assumption to be Vash The Stampede. "I finally found ya!" The fat guy smiled.

Vash simply reached for his revolver… and drew it and took aim. After that, everything was a blur, but I know that Vash was gone in an instant. I began to follow the fat guy and his skinny henchmen, but at a distance so that they wouldn't notice me. While I was walking, I noticed that I was wearing my suit and my white fedora again! I not only still had my guitar with me, but I also had all my burn marks, too. I felt the surface of my face to feel that I was also wearing a very… ghoulish looking mask.

I knew who I had become…

I had become my greatest alias! The legendary Phantom Savage!

Chapter Title based off of the song Rise Of The Phoenix by Tenacious D


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